You have incorporated your French company from abroad — usually a SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or an SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with tightly held shares) — and your Kbis (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court, proving your company exists in the RCS, the Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the French trade and companies register) shows a registered address. Now the business needs real walls: a shop in Paris, a small office in Boulogne, a warehouse near Roissy. Your estate agent sends you a draft called a bail commercial, talks about 3/6/9 as if everybody knew what it meant, and asks you to sign quickly because another candidate is waiting. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, you cannot visit the premises twice, and you have never signed a French lease in your life.
This guide explains the French commercial lease in business language for a non-resident founder: which contract to choose, how to sign it safely from abroad, how your rent can move every three years and at renewal, and what happens if the landlord refuses to keep you. France protects the shopkeeper far more than most common-law systems do — the statute gives you a nine-year framework, a right to walk away every three years, and, above all, a right to stay or to be paid off that lawyers call the propriété commerciale, the commercial property right of the tenant. But every one of these protections has a deadline and a formality attached, and a foreign signatory who misses them pays in cash. The full journey from incorporation to daily operations is described in our hub guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, and the practical presentation of the lease contract on the official business portal is a useful companion to this article: Contrat de bail commercial – Service Public Entreprendre.
I. How Do You Sign a French Commercial Lease From Abroad Without Getting Trapped?
A. Should You Choose a 3/6/9 Lease, a Short-Term Derogatory Lease or a Simple Domiciliation?
The first question is whether the protective statute even applies to you. Article L145-1 of the Commercial Code states that its provisions apply to leases of buildings or premises in which a business is operated: “Les dispositions du présent chapitre s’appliquent aux baux des immeubles ou locaux dans lesquels un fonds est exploité”. In plain terms, you enter the protected world of the bail commercial when four conditions meet: a commercial, industrial or craft business (fonds de commerce, the going concern made of customers, lease right, stock and equipment), registration of that business in the RCS or the national business register, premises where the business is actually operated, and a lease granted for that operation. A pure office used for a liberal profession or a holding with no trade sits outside the statute and falls under the lighter bail professionnel of the Civil Code — six years, more freedom, but no renewal right and no eviction payment. Before signing anything, confirm with your lawyer which regime your activity triggers, because the draft your agent calls a commercial lease may legally be something else, and the protections described below only exist inside the statute.
If you are inside the statute, the default product is the bail 3/6/9: a nine-year lease in which the tenant may leave every three years. Article L145-4 of the Commercial Code sets the frame in one sentence: “La durée du contrat de location ne peut être inférieure à neuf ans.” The tenant then holds the exit option: at the end of each three-year period, with at least six months’ notice by registered letter or court officer’s writ, the tenant walks away owing nothing more. The landlord has no mirror right — the landlord can only break the nine years early to rebuild, rehouse or demolish in narrowly listed cases. For a foreign founder testing the French market, this asymmetry is gold: you lock the premises for nine years against the landlord while keeping an exit without penalty every three years for yourself. Refuse any clause that presents the nine years as binding on you without the three-year break, or that makes your exit conditional on a penalty: in a standard commercial lease such a clause is unwritten, meaning the judge treats it as if it never existed.
The alternative for a testing phase is the short-term bail dérogatoire, the derogatory lease that steps outside the statute. Article L145-5 of the Commercial Code allows the parties, when the tenant moves in, to set the statute aside on one condition: “Les parties peuvent, lors de l’entrée dans les lieux du preneur, déroger aux dispositions du présent chapitre à la condition que la durée totale du bail ou des baux successifs ne soit pas supérieure à trois ans.” You can therefore sign a twelve, eighteen or twenty-four-month lease with full freedom on rent, renewal and exit — but the three-year ceiling is absolute across successive leases, and if you stay even one month past the end without signing a full commercial lease, a new nine-year lease under the statute automatically arises by operation of law. Foreign founders love the derogatory lease for a pilot shop or a first Paris outpost, and they are right to use it, provided the calendar is diarised: at month thirty, either you leave, or you negotiate the long lease from strength, or the statute catches you by default. Seasonal businesses are the only exception the text preserves, and a year-round shop or office never qualifies.
Between the two sits a third option many foreign groups overlook: start with a domiciliation (a registered-address service approved by the prefecture) while you search, and only sign the commercial lease once the right premises are found. A domiciliation gives your company a prestigious Paris address for the Kbis, mail handling and meeting rooms for a monthly fee, with no nine-year commitment and no deposit. It cannot host your stock, your machines or your walk-in customers, and some regulated activities refuse it, but for a software company, a consultancy or a sales subsidiary run from abroad during year one, it buys twelve months of hunting time. Whatever you choose, insist on a full handover inventory (état des lieux): since the 2014 reform, the derogatory lease requires one by law, and in a 3/6/9 it is the only evidence that will decide, nine years later, who pays for the worn floor, the drilled walls and the dead air-conditioning. Ask for dated photographs annexed to the lease, keep the energy performance file (DPE, diagnostic de performance énergétique) the landlord must supply, and never accept a clause making you responsible for major structural repairs (grosses réparations) or for the landlord’s property tax without a discount on the rent — the market practice since the Pinel law of 18 June 2014 is a precise three-yearly inventory of charges, taxes and works shared between the parties.
One final trap concerns the person who signs, not the paper signed. French landlords routinely ask the non-resident president or manager to stand personal surety (caution personnelle) for the company’s rent, sometimes without a cap in amount or time. From London or Dubai that signature looks harmless; in a Paris enforcement it means a bailiff (commissaire de justice, the court officer formerly called huissier de justice) seizing your French bank balance and registering against your French assets for rent your subsidiary stopped paying two years ago. Cap any surety in amount and in duration — for example twelve months’ rent, expiring when the first three-year period ends — refuse joint-and-several wording (solidarité) unless the rent discount genuinely pays for the risk, and require the landlord to chase the company first. If the landlord insists on an uncapped personal guarantee as a condition of renting to a foreign-owned company, treat that demand as pricing information: a larger cash deposit (two or three quarters’ rent instead of one) or a bank guarantee (garantie bancaire) from your French bank almost always costs less than an unlimited personal exposure, and it keeps the negotiation commercial instead of personal.
B. How to Sign, Update the Company Records and Take the Keys From Abroad?
Signing from abroad is entirely possible, but the file must be built as if a judge will read it in five years — because one day a judge might. Have the draft reviewed by a French lawyer before you countersign, not after: the clauses on rent indexation, charges, works, assignment and termination interact, and the landlord’s template is written for the landlord. Give your Paris contact a written power of attorney (pouvoir) limited to this lease, this rent and this premises, with an expiry date, rather than a general authority to bind the company; a qualified electronic signature in the European format is valid for a private-deed lease (acte sous seing privé), which is all most shops and offices need, while a notarial deed (acte authentique) is only required for leases longer than twelve years or when the parties want automatic enforcement. Initial every page, number the annexes (plans, inventory, energy file, internal regulations of the building), and agree in writing who holds the signed originals. Registration of the lease with the tax office (enregistrement) is no longer systematically required for its validity, but keep proof of the signature date — a registered letter, an electronic timestamp, a notary’s stamp — because every future deadline runs from it.
Once signed, the lease changes your company’s public face, and the public records must follow. Since 1 January 2023 all company filings pass through the guichet unique (the single online portal operated by the INPI, the Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French intellectual property office that runs the company formalities desk), and a transfer of the registered office (transfert de siège) or the opening of a secondary establishment (établissement secondaire) is filed there with the signed lease attached. The greffe then issues an updated Kbis showing the new address, and the move is announced in a legal gazette (journal d’annonces légales) and flagged in the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official bulletin publishing company events). A foreign founder who signs a beautiful lease but forgets the filing keeps a Kbis showing the old domiciliation address: bailiffs serve termination notices at the old address, the tax office sends the property tax (cotisation foncière des entreprises, the local business tax) to the old address, and the first you hear of either is a penalty. File within one month of the move, order two fresh Kbis extracts to prove the update, and send one to your insurer the same week.
The handover day deserves the same discipline as the signature. Travel for it if the premises matter — a shop front, a restaurant shell, a warehouse — or mandate a court officer to record the condition of the walls, floors, ceilings, shutters, wiring and plumbing with photographs. French litigation over deposits and dilapidations is won or lost on this single document: without a precise entry inventory, the law presumes you received the premises in good repair and you will return them in good repair, paying for a decade of wear you never caused. Count the keys and badges, note the meter readings, test the shutters and the alarm, photograph every stain and crack, and have both parties sign each page of the report on the spot. If the landlord refuses a joint inspection, have the court officer serve a summons to attend and draw up the report alone — the cost, a few hundred euros, is the cheapest insurance in the whole operation. Store the lease, the powers, the inventory and the photographs in one digital file your successor, your accountant and your lawyer can open from anywhere in the world.
Insurance and utilities close the file. A French commercial tenant must insure the premises against fire, water damage and third-party claims (assurance multirisque professionnelle) from day one, and the lease usually requires you to prove it every year on request; a foreign group policy that covers worldwide subsidiaries sometimes excludes French leasehold improvements (agencements), so ask your broker for a French certificate in the exact tenant name within the first week. Transfer the electricity and gas meters, the telephone line and the business rates file to the company name, and check whether the building’s collective insurance already covers part of the risk — double insurance is common and nobody refunds it. Finally, calendar three dates before you forget the lease entirely: the end of year two (decide whether to stay or give notice for the first three-year break), the end of year eight (prepare the renewal request or the landlord’s notice), and every third anniversary (the rent revision window described below). A company run from abroad survives on calendars, not on memory, and the commercial lease is a nine-year diary disguised as a contract.
Practical competitors in Paris will tell you that everything above can be done by e-mail in a week, and for a standard office that is broadly true — but the official guidance confirms the skeleton of the procedure, not the negotiation inside it. The business portal’s lease page (Contrat de bail commercial – Service Public Entreprendre) and its pages on termination (Résilier un bail commercial – Service Public Entreprendre) describe who can sign, how long the lease lasts and how it ends; what they cannot do is price your rent, cap your surety or draft your inventory. French-language competitors such as legalplace, captaincontrat and village-justice publish useful checklists on these points, and their checklists converge on the same message: the statute protects the tenant who respects forms and deadlines, and it abandons the tenant who signs first and reads later. Read the service-public pages to understand the landscape, then have your own draft reviewed line by line — the two steps cost little and they are the difference between a lease that serves your business and a lease that owns it.
II. How Do You Control the Rent and Save Your Right to Stay or Be Paid?
A. How Is Your Rent Revised Every Three Years and Fixed at Renewal?
During the nine years, the rent is not frozen — but its movements are fenced. Article L145-33 of the Commercial Code states the lodestar for every renewal or revision: “Le montant des loyers des baux renouvelés ou révisés doit correspondre à la valeur locative.” Failing agreement, that rental value is assessed on five statutory criteria: the characteristics of the premises, their permitted use (destination), the obligations each party bears, the local trading factors (facteurs locaux de commercialité), and the prices commonly charged nearby. In practice the landlord’s valuer and yours will argue over footfall, corner position, shop-front metres, storage ratios and comparable lettings in the same Paris arrondissement — and a foreign tenant who kept the entry inventory, the photographs and the schedule of works paid out of pocket arrives at that argument armed, while the tenant who kept nothing arrives unarmed. Every euro of fitting-out you funded yourself is, by law, ignored when the rental value is computed at revision, so keep the invoices: they lower your rent.
Between renewals, each party may demand a rent adjustment every three years — the révision triennale. Article L145-38 of the Commercial Code opens the window in these terms: “La demande en révision ne peut être formée que trois ans au moins après la date d’entrée en jouissance du locataire ou après le point de départ du bail renouvelé.” The adjustment then takes effect from the date of the demand, and new demands may follow every three years. The increase (or decrease) is normally capped at the movement of the official index since the last agreed or judicially fixed rent — the ILC (indice des loyers commerciaux, the quarterly commercial rents index) for shops and commercial premises, or the ILAT (indice des loyers des activités tertiaires, the tertiary activities index) for offices and warehouses. Only proof of a material change in local trading factors that by itself moved the rental value by more than ten percent breaks the cap, and even then the yearly rise cannot exceed ten percent of the previous year’s rent. Concretely: a lease signed at 30,000 euros a year with the ILC up eight percent over three years can rise to about 32,400 euros on revision, not to the 40,000 euros the landlord dreams of because the street became fashionable — unless the landlord proves the street itself, and not general inflation, added more than ten percent to your rental value, which courts examine strictly.
At renewal — the end of the nine years — the fence moves but does not disappear. The renewed rent is in principle the rental value under the five criteria, which can mean a sharp rise for a shop whose street exploded in value; but the statute then applies a smoothing rule (plafonnement, the cap, and its counterpart the déplafonnement, the uncapping in defined cases such as a change of activity, a lease longer than nine years, substantial under-renting, or a material change in local trading factors). Foreign founders are regularly shocked by renewal proposals doubling the rent on a successful Paris boutique — and regularly relieved to learn that the cap holds unless one of the uncapping cases is proven by the landlord. Negotiate the renewal eighteen months before expiry, commission your own rental valuation (expertise locative) from a chartered surveyor who knows the arrondissement, and never let the renewal deadline pass while bargaining continues: an unanswered renewal request followed by silence extends the old lease by tacit continuation (tacite prolongation) at the old rent, which is comfortable but fragile, while a late claim for the capped rent can cost a year of arrears. The judge of commercial rents (juge des loyers commerciaux) at the Paris judicial court fixes dozens of these rents every month, and a well-documented file usually settles before it reaches him.
Two drafting points decide most rent disputes before they start. First, the indexation clause (clause d’échelle mobile): an annual automatic adjustment to the ILC or ILAT, with the base quarter precisely identified, avoids the shock of a three-year catch-up and keeps both parties honest — but check that the clause works both ways, that it excludes taxes and charges from its base, and that a distortion trigger (clause de recalage) allows a return to rental value if the index drifts far from the market. A clause that only ever rises, or that indexes on an inappropriate index, can be struck down or rewritten by the judge, yet litigating it from abroad costs a year you will never recover. Second, the charges and taxes schedule: since the Pinel reform, the lease must state precisely which charges, taxes and works fall on the tenant, with a three-yearly statement and a forward budget. Refuse lump-sum forfaits de charges with no accounts, refuse the landlord’s corporate tax or loan repayments disguised as charges, and cap your share of major works by category. A foreign tenant who cannot visit the building relies entirely on these statements — demand the contractual right to audit them with your accountant, and exercise it at least once per three-year period.
A housekeeping note for groups: the rent your French subsidiary pays to a foreign parent that owns the Paris walls is not a number you can set at will. If the same group sits on both sides of the lease, the tax administration may compare the rent to the market under the transfer-pricing rules and reassess either the French company’s deductions or the parent’s French-source income — and the VAT treatment of the rent (taxable by option or by nature for fitted premises) must match the invoices actually issued. Keep the valuation that justified an intra-group rent with the lease file, apply the same indexation you would grant a stranger, and have the subsidiary’s board formally approve the lease so a minority shareholder or a future auditor cannot call it a hidden distribution. The commercial lease is a company act like any other: signed by the right person, at the right price, for the company’s interest, with the paper to prove it.
B. What Happens If the Landlord Refuses to Renew or Demands an Early Exit?
The heart of the French system is the tenant’s right to renewal — and the price the landlord pays to defeat it. Article L145-9 of the Commercial Code provides the choreography: “Par dérogation aux articles 1736 et 1737 du code civil, les baux de locaux soumis au présent chapitre ne cessent que par l’effet d’un congé donné six mois à l’avance ou d’une demande de renouvellement.” Without a formal notice (congé) served by court officer six months ahead, or a renewal request from the tenant, the written lease simply continues tacitly past its end date — and during that tacit extension, notice must still give six months and expire on the last day of a calendar quarter. The notice must state its grounds and warn the tenant, on pain of nullity, that any challenge or any claim for an eviction payment must go to court within two years of the date the notice takes effect. A foreign tenant who receives such a writ in French, files it unread, and discovers it eleven months later has usually lost nothing yet — but has burned almost half of the two-year window, so forward every court officer’s paper to your lawyer the day it arrives.
If the landlord refuses renewal, the rule is pay. Article L145-14 of the Commercial Code states the landlord’s freedom and its price in the same breath: “Le bailleur peut refuser le renouvellement du bail.” The same article continues: the landlord must then, except in the narrow statutory cases of serious and legitimate grounds, “payer au locataire évincé une indemnité dite d’éviction égale au préjudice causé par le défaut de renouvellement.” That payment covers the market value of the business (fonds de commerce) assessed by professional custom, plus normal removal and reinstallation costs and the transfer duties on an equivalent business — unless the landlord proves the actual loss is smaller. For a thriving Paris shop, the payment routinely equals several years of profit plus the cost of moving; for a loss-making office, it shrinks toward the cost of relocating. Either way, the tenant who is refused renewal and stays in the premises keeps a right of retention (droit au maintien) until the money is paid, under the conditions of the statute — which is why landlords negotiate seriously once the refusal is served. The official business portal summarises the valuation method here: Comment est évaluée l’indemnité d’éviction d’un bail commercial, and its page on the refusal itself here: Refus de renouvellement du bail commercial par le propriétaire.
The leading court decision on defective notices is one every foreign tenant should know, because it turns a landlord’s paperwork error into the tenant’s strategic choice. In its judgment of 28 June 2018 (no. 17-18.756, published in the Bulletin), the Third Civil Chamber of the Cour de cassation held: “un congé délivré sans motif ou pour motifs équivoques par le bailleur produit néanmoins ses effets et met fin au bail commercial, dès lors que le bailleur est en toujours en droit de refuser le renouvellement du bail à la condition de payer une indemnité d’éviction” (Cass. 3e civ., 28 June 2018, no. 17-18.756). In that case the landlord had served a refusal without offering any eviction payment; the tenant sued for annulment and for the payment; the Court of Appeal of Colmar awarded the payment; and the Cour de cassation rejected the landlord’s appeal, adding that the nullity of such a notice under Article L145-9 is a relative nullity that only the tenant may invoke — so the tenant chooses: either waive the defect, claim the eviction payment and stay pending payment, or stand on the defect and continue the lease. For a tenant run from abroad, the lesson is operational: a sloppy or aggressive notice is not the end of the story but the beginning of an option, and the option is exercised in court within two years, never by ignoring the paper.
The tenant’s own exit rights mirror this protection on the way out. The three-year break described above requires no justification and no payment: six months’ registered letter or court officer’s writ before the end of a three-year period, and the lease ends. Selling the business is equally protected: Article L145-16 of the Commercial Code declares unwritten — deemed never to have existed — any clause that would stop the tenant assigning the lease with the business: “Sont également réputées non écrites, quelle qu’en soit la forme, les conventions tendant à interdire au locataire de céder son bail ou les droits qu’il tient du présent chapitre à l’acquéreur de son fonds de commerce ou de son entreprise”. A landlord who inserted a clause d’agrément requiring consent to any sale can still demand to vet the buyer’s solvency and to remain joined with guarantees, but cannot block the sale of your French business to fund your next venture. The same freedom covers mergers and universal transfers within groups, with the court able to substitute equivalent guarantees if the original ones lapse. For a foreign group restructuring — Paris subsidiary absorbed, business sold to a French buyer, branch converted to subsidiary — this assignment freedom is the clause that makes the exit price real, and any lease draft restricting it should be renegotiated before signature, not litigated after.
Unpaid rent, finally, follows its own ritual, and the ritual protects the tenant who reacts fast. Article L145-41 of the Commercial Code provides: “Toute clause insérée dans le bail prévoyant la résiliation de plein droit ne produit effet qu’un mois après un commandement demeuré infructueux.” The automatic termination clause (clause résolutoire) that every lease contains therefore sleeps until the landlord serves a formal payment order (commandement de payer) by court officer, waits one full month mentioning that deadline on pain of nullity, and only then asks the judge to record the termination. Before the court rules with final force, the tenant may ask the judge for time — payment delays (délais de grâce) of up to two years that suspend the clause — and since the economic simplification law of 26 May 2026, such delays for unpaid rent also require showing the ability to clear the arrears and a restart of full current-rent payments before the first hearing. A subsidiary in a temporary cash gap, funded from abroad within weeks, is exactly the case these delays were written for: pay the current rent immediately, clear or schedule the arrears, appear with bank proof, and ask. The landlord who refuses any discussion and rushes to court usually recovers less, later, than the landlord who grants three months — remind yours of that arithmetic in writing.
Two closing cautions for the non-resident tenant. First, never confuse the commercial lease with the company’s registered address: moving the shop without updating the RCS through the guichet unique means notices, tax bills and court papers keep going to the old walls, and French courts deem service at the registered address valid even if you were in another country. Second, never sign a side letter in English that contradicts the French lease — for example a heads of terms promising a break the lease does not contain, or a comfort letter capping charges the lease leaves open. Before a Paris judge, the signed French lease and its formal riders win, and the English e-mail thread loses. Keep one bilingual summary of the lease (rent, index, breaks, renewal date, notice address, insurance and works split) in the company file, update it at every revision, and send it to whoever manages the French operation each time the manager changes. Companies run from abroad do not lose leases in courtrooms; they lose them in inboxes nobody monitored.
Conclusion
A French commercial lease signed from abroad is a nine-year asset, not a formality: inside the statute of Article L145-1 of the Commercial Code, the 3/6/9 rhythm of Article L145-4 gives you nine years of security with an exit without penalty every three years, the derogatory lease of Article L145-5 buys a testing phase capped at three years total, and the assignment freedom of Article L145-16 keeps your business saleable. The rent obeys the rental value of Article L145-33, the three-year revision fence of Article L145-38, and the renewal choreography of Article L145-9 — six months, formal writ, two years to sue. If the landlord refuses to keep you, Article L145-14 converts your right to stay into money equal to the loss suffered, and the Cour de cassation’s 28 June 2018 ruling (no. 17-18.756) (Cass. 3e civ., 28 June 2018, no. 17-18.756) lets you choose between the payment and the continuation when the notice is defective. If you fall behind, Article L145-41 gives you the one-month commandement and the judge’s payment delays to recover. Sign carefully, file the address on the guichet unique, photograph everything, calendar the three dates, and run the lease like the nine-year diary it is. For the rest of the foreign-founder journey — bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire — our hub guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder remains the starting point.
Need a quick opinion on your case
You are signing, renewing or losing a French commercial lease while living abroad and want the rent, the renewal right and the deadlines secured before you commit. The firm offers a phone consultation: 80 EUR including VAT, within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 — Maître Reda Kohen. Send your draft lease, renewal notice or payment order through our contact page before the call so the advice is concrete.